Quick Guide to Determine the Right Resource Management Solution Using OpenAir PSA

Every professional services organization has its way of handling resource management. When discussing an OpenAir implementation, Top Step spends considerable time with each client, understanding and detailing how they manage resource allocation and assignments for their projects.

Why? Because resource management is about the process, not the tool. As flexible and powerful as NetSuite OpenAir is, it can’t magically do resource management for you.

Even though we’ve found each company to have a unique process for resource management, we’ve found that there are two big categories in which management and assignment of resources are handled.

The good news is OpenAir is very flexible and has several ways to approach each type of resource management method. This flexibility makes it easy to design a solution that supports your process.

So what does resource management look like for most professional service organizations? What features and tools in the OpenAir platform should you consider using? And what are the upsides and downsides of each of these models?

What are the Types of Resource Management for Professional Service Organizations?

The details of how companies manage resource allocation match the individual needs and structures of that business. However, as we’ve worked with Top Step clients over the years, helping them set up their resource process within OpenAir, we’ve noticed that there are two macro-categories that can describe resource management for almost every professional services organization: centralized and decentralized.

A centralized resource management process is probably the most common of the two models. The quick definition is a defined process around allocating a pool of resources that involves an individual or team of leaders responsible for assigning those resources based on project requests.

These managers aren’t involved at the project level, and project managers don’t have much control over the resource allocation other than their requests.

In a decentralized resource management model, those team members responsible for a project are also responsible for building out the teams that work on those projects. This model tends to work more for smaller organizations, but that’s not a hard and fast rule.

It’s essential to take a moment and understand the kind of model you’re already using to choose the functionality in OpenAir that will best support that model.

OpenAir Functional Models for Resource Management

Not every method of resource management in OpenAir pairs perfectly with the type of resource method you use. Plus, each functional model for resource management within the platform has its pros and cons. It’s best to consider which elements are critical to support your process and which ones may cause more challenges than they solve.

Once you determine the type of resource management that most aligns with your organizational process, you can determine how to customize what you may need to customize to streamline your resource management. But first, you need to understand each method and its pros and cons, so you can narrow in on a method that will work best for you. We touch on these different functional models below and the pros and cons of each.

Manual Bookings

With manual bookings, you’re doing direct bookings of resources using the booking forms or worksheet in the Resource Module or even within the Project Center. Manual bookings can work well for both centralized and decentralized resource management.

Pros:

• Immediate booking of the resources
• Communication notifications available
• Supports project task assignment and timesheet access control

Cons:

• Manual approval workflow
• Requires oversight and monitoring of the data

Booking Requests

Booking requests are a relatively uncommon model due to its limitations and the fact that it only works well with a centralized resource management model. The idea with Booking Requests is to have a formal resource request process. The process can use either generic or named resources, but the resources are only booked after approval.

Pros:

• Can be part of an automated workflow
• There is a workflow for generics
• It supports booking types

Cons:

• There is no resource schedule visibility for in-flight requests
• There are no resource bookings until the request is approved
• May prevent task assignment or timesheet access, depending on your configuration

Booking Approvals

The Booking Approvals feature was a later addition to OpenAir and came about to resolve some of the limitations of Booking Requests. Similar to a timesheet process, this model supports centralized models best.  It allows for named or generic resource requests. The workflow and approval routing can be automated and the resources are booked during the workflow process.

Pros:

• Allows for an automated workflow
• Immediately books resources
• Has a workflow for generics
• Supports resource task assignment and timesheet access, depending on your configuration

Cons:

• Creation does not necessarily force the approval workflow
• The workflow drives booking type categories (open/submitted)

Booking Planner

This model works for both centralized and decentralized processes and answers one of the big requests of users – a drag and drop interface for booking management. Resources are booked immediately with the Booking Planner, and you can view Bookings by Resource and by Client: Project.

Pros:

• Provides drag and drop creation functionality
• Offers an interactive resource and team view for monitoring
• Immediately books the resources
• Respects booking workflows and approvals
• Gives the opportunity to run a “What if” analysis

Cons:

• Data views may require scrolling and/or paging

Resource Demand Request

Resource Demand Request serves a very specific use case in centralized resource models – project teams create queues of resource needs by skill profiles, and resource managers fulfill those requests. The resource is only reserved after fulfillment. This is most effective when used for big projects – like a system install – where a large number of team members with the same skills might be needed at once.

Pros:

• Supports a project team plan approach
• Handles types and quantities of resources that are requested
• Fulfillment process that uses the “best matching candidate”

Cons:

• Must use skill profiles and keep them up-to-date
• Uses a multi-step process with no visibility from the resource schedule for in-flight requests
• May prevent task assignment or timesheet access, depending on your configuration

Task Assignment with Bookings

Task Assignments with Bookings offers initial booking creation from a project plan to support both centralized and decentralized models. An automated approval workflow is required to make this functional model work.

Pros:

• Uses a project plan to create the initial resource schedule with “assignment profiles”
• Supports search by generic for a named resource as part of an automated workflow
• Supports project manager control of the initial resource plan
• The resource manager can swap generics in the plan for named resources

Cons:

• Bookings and task assignments are separate
• Modified or rejected bookings are not reflected in the resource tasks

Task Assignments

To support decentralized processes, there can be some limitations to this functional model. However, it is possible to use Task Assignments to manage your resource requirements for a project.

Pros:

• Uses a project plan to manage the resource schedules, like an interactive Gantt chart for project and resource scheduling
• You have the option to “re-forecast” remaining budget hours based on time worked

Cons:

• Task assignment spreads hours from start to end – there is no fine-grained resource scheduling for shorter periods within the project
• May drive more granular project planning than is necessary
• Limited categorization is available at the task level, depending on your system configuration

Conclusion

The process you have developed over time within your professional services organization is the right one for you. You might want to tweak it for better efficiency, but you shouldn’t have to change it to adhere to your PSA tools. Your PSA should be able to support your process. In our recent webinar, OpenAir Resource Management Model Comparisons, we talk in greater depth about resource management models.

OpenAir is highly configurable and has a wealth of options, no matter if you use a centralized or decentralized model for your resource management. If you’re wondering how to use OpenAir for your specific needs, or if you’d like to add custom automation or adapt features to your company, contact us at Top Step. We’ve helped hundreds of organizations realize the power of their OpenAir implementation so that they better manage their resources, projects, and profitability.